It is hard to believe that among hacker-led Wikileaks, 25% of its workers, volunteers and supporters are snitches. Not even organized crime suffers that scale of corruption. However, in spyworld it is required that 100% of spies snitch on both targets and each other, trained as they are to do just that and only that.

Now it is obligatory to exaggerate threats among secret organizations up to no good, that is the principal argument for secrecy. So to claim 25% of hackers are snitches, as 100% of spies claim they must snitch 100% of the time, it is necessary to exaggerate internal risk, to demand that snitching against snitches is necessary to save the secret cult.

Cult countersnitching is as convoluted as counterspying, and no cult member is safe from it, or so snitches avow: get used to it, the axe could fall without warning. The motto of brutal authoritarinaism, no?

The undermining paradox of secret organizations is that they require snitching on violators: disclosing secrets. And they are rewarded for doing so.

A similar paradox involves leaking confidential information: the greater the leakage the greater the secrecy countermeasures. The greater the secrecy the greater punishment for leaking and the greater the rewards for abetting leaking.

I think Cryptome’s analysis fails to account for the power law phenomena involved. Wikileaks might be just a dozen folks; it would be hard for three of them to be snitches. Conversely, if a large nation has ten thousand soldiers, it might be possible for 2500 of them to be spies, because the demographics of a dozen is quite different than the demographics of a myriad.